*****

MOTION TO DISASSOCIATE WBAI LOCAL STATION BOARD FROM PUBLIC COMMENTS OF STEVE BROWN

Whereas, in a series of public emails sent to many WBAI listeners over many months, WBAI Local Station Board member Steve Brown has engaged in an unrelenting campaign of vitriolic accusations against management, staff, and listeners of WBAI that damage the credibility of the station through innuendo, with no basis in fact, thereby injuring staff morale, contributing to a climate of fear and mistrust at WBAI, and undermining fundraising efforts; and

Whereas Steve Brown has engaged in a concerted, long-term defamatory campaign focused on an individual member of management, Program Director Bernard White, calling for the firing of Mr. White, calling upon Indra Hardat to "clean house," using his role as a Local Station Board member to try to make sure that Mr. White is fired, and calling upon LSB members, listeners, and staff of WBAI, "just as Bertrand Russell once convened a Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal," to "convene an ad hoc ARC [Applicant Review Committee] to select a new program director," in a flagrant end-run around the bylaws provision that such a committee is only established if the Program Director position is vacant, and then only by the LSB itself; and that this campaign has often included racially inflammatory remarks, including the use of racial stereotypes, as outlined in the excerpts from emails included in Appendix I; and

Whereas Steve Brown has used his position on the Local Station Board to send emails to WBAI listeners claiming detailed knowledge of what former General Manager Don Rojas and Bernard White have and have not done as management employees, and made baseless accusations against Mr. Rojas and Mr. White, as outlined in the excerpts from emails included in Appendix II; and

Whereas Steve Brown has contributed to the exacerbation of racial tensions at WBAI, at the same time that he has attributed WBAI’s financial difficulties to "the tensions, frictions, and politics -- of race," by suggesting that the financial success of a Pacifica affiliate station in Boulder, Colorado, can be attributed to its racial homogeneity, as outlined in the excerpt of an email included in Appendix III; and

Whereas Steve Brown has used public emails, instead of constructive dialogue, to issue ad hominem attacks upon members of the Local Station Board who have disagreed with his positions and to belittle the struggles of communities of color, reducing any discussion of racial justice and inclusion to an accusation of "race baiting" (such as calling those who disagree with his positions "Defenders of the People of Color"), as well as attempting to foment racial antagonisms among listeners (falsely referring to WBAI LSB meetings as "virtual race riots" and inventing alleged incidents to justify that label), as outlined in the excerpts from emails included in Appendix IV; and

Whereas Steve Brown has used his position on the local station board to spread misinformation to listeners and present false accusations against two staff members of WBAI, as outlined in the excerpt from an email in Appendix V; and

Whereas the LSB is specifically charged under the Pacifica bylaws with the duty to "assist in station fundraising activities" and to "exercise all of its powers and duties with care, loyalty, diligence and sound business judgment," and one of the official purposes of the Pacifica Foundation is "to engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors"; and

Whereas such unsubstantiated charges, negative attacks, and racially charged rhetoric are extremely damaging to the station’s efforts to increase listenership and raise funds, and furthermore run counter to the above-stated mission of Pacifica;

Therefore, be it resolved, that:

1. The LSB disapproves of, and disassociates itself from, the aforesaid public statements by Board member Steve Brown, and calls on all LSB members to desist from making statements that prejudge the performance of WBAI management personnel, perpetuate racist stereotypes, indulge in personal attacks on management and staff, and undermine listener financial support for the station, and

2. The LSB respects differences of opinion about station policy among its own members and with station management, and resolves that the LSB Programming Committee will offer to work with the Program Director to organize and co-sponsor a community forum with speakers holding diverse views on the nature of WBAI programming as part of the overall role of media in U.S. society, and

3. The LSB Secretary shall forthwith publish the text of this motion and the results of the vote on the LSB section of the WBAI website and arrange for printed copies to be made available at the station and at future LSB meetings.

*****

Roll Call vote on Disassociating LSB from Public Comments of Steve Brown

Marion Borenstein – Yes
Omowale Clay – Yes
Lisa Davis - Yes
Sara Flounders – Yes
Cheryl Ife Griffin - Yes
Patty Heffley – No
Ray Laforest – Yes
Bob Lederer – Yes
R. Paul Martin – Abstain
Cerene Roberts – Yes
Evan Tobias – Yes
Michael Tarif Warren – Yes

Not voting:
Vajra Kilgour (Chair)

Vote: 10 - 1 - 1 Passes

*****

Appendix I

Racist stereotypes, crudely offensive language, and unsubstantiated allegations of violent behavior by Bernard White and Errol Maitland

To: News@lists.stevebrownOnBoard.org
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 00:04:13 -0500
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Bernard White froths at the mouth in WBAI's hallway

This was just posted on the Blue Board. You might find it of interest. Here is the direct link. http://www.listenerforums.net/cgi-bin/issues_config.pl?review=49341#49341

Stephen M Brown
sbrown13@nyc.rr.com

Bernard White froths at the mouth in WBAI's hallway

Posted By: Steve Brown (66.65.76.39)
Date: Monday, 13 March 2006, at 11:54 p.m.

Was anyone a witness to -- or does anyone have knowledge of -- the latest episode of Bernard White losing it at WBAI?

This morning, Monday, 3-13-06, at approximately 10 AM and thereafter (according to one eye-witness who has talked and two others who are too terrified to talk but may soon change their minds), Bernard received a piece of information [a very interesting piece that I will not yet reveal] that propelled him out of his chair and into the station hallway, frothing at the mouth, shrieking at the top of his lungs, bellowing crude racist insults clearly directed at Indra Hardat in her office down the hall.

Then -- and not for the first time in the past few days -- he menaced Indra, towering over her in what must have been a deliberately intimidating confrontation, literally screaming into her face while pumping his fist threateningly back and forth.

Shortly thereafter I was told that Bernard's behavior [and for the same reason] was aped by Erroll Maitland, also running through the hallway pumping his fist in the air in anger, appearing to threaten all in his path.

One witness describes coming to the station these days as like living in the South Bronx, where rival gangs are shooting at each other and all you can do is keep your head down to keep from getting beaten up, knifed, or shot. He and others fear coming to the station.

They claim that Bernard and Erroll and others have instituted a reign of terror in which staff members have literally been beaten up on the premises. But actual beatings no longer have to be administered, since all, evidently, have received the message: Don't cross Bernard or you will soon be nailed to one.

According to two staff members, it was not just "little people" but actual management personnel such as Janet Coleman, Kathy Davis, and others who witnessed these and other volcanic and abusive outbursts by Bernard, mostly directed against Indra in order to intimidate her into doing or not doing a particular thing that he wanted. But neither Coleman nor Davis nor the "little people" have agreed to sign affidavits attesting to Bernard's crude, racist language and physicial intimidation (yet).

But at some point, staff members who see and know what is going on will have to decide whether to blow the whistle on bullies like Bernard and Erroll even if it means calling the police. It is not fair to leave Indra standing alone in the face of such blatant macho intimidation. She needs some support, both moral and physical, in order to do her job.

When are the people at the station going to speak up? Even anonymous postings would help -- at least they would get the information out. And this would help throw Bernard out. Otherwise he will continue to terrorize the station and the general manager like a petty despot.

Call for violence against Bernard White ("you should have been at her side whacking Bernard with a baseball bat") and statement that Mr. White's actions are worse for WBAI than those of "Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush combined"

http://www.listenerforums.net

Shame on you and (many of) the WBAI staff!

Posted By: Steve Brown (66.65.76.39)
Date: Tuesday, 14 March 2006, at 3:25 p.m.

...Where were you, Steffie, when Bernard was terrorizing Indra in full view of so many staff people, not just once but several times, yelling and cursing at her at the top of his lungs, looming over her and waving his fists ominously in her face -- as reported by eye witnesses? If you were there, you should have been at her side whacking Bernard with a baseball bat and then calling the police.

The irony is -- you phony feminist -- that Bernard would not DARE behave that way if Indra were not a woman. That should make you doubly incensed at him and ready to organize the staff against him. But instead you dither safely from the Blue Board about my "passive voice" in an email?

That goes for every other f*****g cowardly member of the WBAI staff, especially those who were actually there, looking on as a woman was being shamefully bullied by a man twice her size -- but doing nothing, uttering not a whimper of protest, issuing not a single call for accountability against the bully named Bernard White who has done more to destroy the finances, morale, and credibility of WBAI than Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush combined have ever managed to do.

Call for the firing of Bernard White, with unsubstantiated allegations of improper behavior

Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:09:41 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Travel back in time to a "crucial moment" and re-engineer WBAI history

[...] You, and I, and hundreds of others have all begged and pleaded with Indra Hardat, the WBAI interim station manager, to fire You-Know-Who. But now it is time to go a step further, and actually provide Indra with a blueprint to help rebuild this station after she (hopefully) cleans house.[...]

* Bernard's cynical inflammation of racial tensions among staff and listeners -- in an attempt to deflect reasonable questions about finances and programming -- by claiming that any who dared question his one-man rule were "racists" and "White supremacists" who wanted to "push African Americans out of the station."

How can we undo all those terrible things? How can we save WBAI by re-engineering history?

I propose that, just as Bertrand Russell once convened a Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal without official sanction from any government, we the listeners and staff of WBAI should convene an ARC -- without official sanction from the station -- to "replay" that watershed decision in which Bernard White was illegitimately named as program director after being unanimously rejected by his peers.

I propose that members of the LSB, listener activists, and as many members of staff as we can gather, sit down together as an ad hoc ARC to select a new program director. The result would then be sent to GM Indra Hardat with a request that she not only fire Bernard White, but consider appointing the selected candidate of this special ARC to take his place. […] .

Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:52:09 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] WBAI and the Domino Pizza Syndrome

[...] The question, then, is WHY – when the cause of WBAI's problem is so obvious and the solution so simple -- neither WBAI management nor Pacifica management has taken the sensible step of replacing a program director who can't drive -- with one who can? Why do they pretend to look every which way to find the cause and solution -- except right in front of their noses? Why all this subterfuge, evasion, and misdirection simply to prop up a WBAI program director whose own listeners (as one of them said to me) "wouldn't cross the street to spit on Bernard if he was on fire." Of course, my "why" is rhetorical.

I know the answer to my own question.

The reason that top management -- local and national -- won't step in and separate this incompetent, spiteful, and malicious employee from WBAI is that they are afraid. They are afraid of what one Pacifica official came right out and characterized as "the civil war [that] might break out if Bernard were fired... [and] stirred up a phony race war claiming that White racists were responsible for his firing."[...]

Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 17:22:43 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Why WBAI has no money

[...] I believe that Program Director Bernard White has unethically used the station's resources to consolidate his own power even at the expense of the station's health. For reasons of personal spite, not related to station business, he has abused his office to "revenge" himself on certain individuals, at great harm to the station.[...]

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:11:26 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Deja vu at WBAI

[...] Our only hope is that the new interim general manager, Indra Hardat, will prove strong enough to stand up to Program Director Bernard White --and replace him "for cause." We need a program director with new ideas (and a better attitude) who can heal internal strife and point the station in a new direction. Indra's heart is certainly in the right place -- but will she listen to it?

Steve Brown

From: "Stephen M Brown" sbrown13@...
Date: Thu Oct 13, 2005 9:38 pm
Subject: Those were WBAI's dollars

[...] Bernard White has totally and irresponsibly wrecked WBAI's audience, and hence its ability to raise money. White is probably the worst thing to happen to WBAI in more than half a century. By arrogantly deciding that his vendetta against someone on his "enemies list" was more important than the welfare of WBAI, he unilaterally and without cause fired our biggest fundraiser -- with the largest audience (probably about 50% of our total listenership) -- who was happened to be responsible for bringing in as much of a third of our revenue.

But no one in authority will hold him accountable. Why is that?

Even if Bernard White were a "good guy" -- democratic, all-inclusive, honest to a fault, beloved by all – he should still be replaced simply as a matter of rudimentary common sense. Any top-management executive who has failed so often and so consistently in performing a job that is so central to the well-being of the station should have been removed long ago.[...]

Racial stereotyping and unsubstantiated allegations: "Bernard White (6-feet-2 inches tall and 300 lbs), began to physically harass Mike Feder"

To: News@lists.stevebrownonboard.org
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 14:40:46 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Rojas and Coughlin suddenly step down

[From the news article-style attachment with color photos of Don Rojas, Dan Coughlin, Bernard White, and others]

Manager of WBAI-FM Quits Historic New York Radio Station Amid Charges of Financial Mismanagement, Administrative Folly, and Anti-Semitic Permissiveness

by Steve Brown Member of the WBAI Local Station Board sbrown13@nyc.rr.com

[...] Mr. Rojas [Don Rojas, then General Manager] took no action when his Program Director, Bernard White (6-feet-2 inches tall and 300 lbs), began to physically harass Mike Feder, a popular broadcaster who had accused management of creating a climate of violence, intimidation, anti-Liberal, anti-White, and anti-Semitic sentiment at the station. After months of such harassment, Feder, a 20-year-plus veteran of WBAI, left in disgust.[...]

Appendix II

Unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks on Don Rojas and Bernard White, including re the latter: "huge personal ego satisfaction that Bernard White derives from being Boss of Bosses"; "autocratic in nature"; "owns" staff members who are "friends and cronies"; unsubstantiated allegation of embezzlement

From: "Stephen M Brown"
To: "Undisclosed Recipients"
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 20:56:14 -0500
Subject: Response to IndyMedia's "Poison of Racial Autonomy at WBAI"

[...] Bernard White is (merely) the program director of WBAI, but he has also functioned as the "de facto" station manager for many years. This has been especially evident during the reign of the actual station manager, Don Rojas, who, although he makes eloquent speeches (and might have been a splendid station manager), spends little time at the station, exercises virtually no oversight upon his staff or the daily running of the station, has no clue as to what is going on, and leaves most of the decisions about station management to Bernard White and Bob Lederer and their Justice & Unity faction acolytes (whom Rojas blatantly and illicitly supported during the recent Local Station Board election campaign).[...]

Do not underestimate the huge personal ego satisfaction that Bernard White derives from being Boss of Bosses at WBAI. He is autocratic in nature, relishes being Numero Uno, and runs WBAI like an old-style Tammany Hall precinct. This is clear from the way he ignores all input from staff, from the board, and from the listeners. In fact, he boasts about his ability to run the station out of his back pocket. And revels in being able to hire and fire at whim .... at being able to make several hundred paid and unpaid staff and producers quake and quiver at his displeasure ... at knowing that he can snuff their air time or terminate them from paid or unpaid jobs without bothering about due process -- in full knowledge that no one will dare speak out for fear of losing his or her own job or airtime, as has happened often at the station, most recently to Mike Feder and Gary Null. [...]

There is also White's personal abuse of his own position as program director, which he uses to award plum airtime and paid station jobs to his friends and cronies -- whom he then "owns," as White indeed owns most of those behind the Justice & Unity party, which now controls the local station board after conducting a "hate" campaign that did not deal with a single issue at WBAI or how to improve the station, but focused entirely on smearing the opposing candidates as "racists" and "White supremacists" who were allegedly fomenting a conspiracy to "seize the station" and "push African Americans out of WBAI." [...]

[...] Possibly hundreds of thousands has been skimmed from concerts, pier parties, and seminars in recent years -- a "perk" the beneficiaries of which will not relinquish without a fight to the death. [...]

Unsubstantiated allegation regarding Bernard White’s salary

Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:09:41 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Travel back in time to a "crucial moment" and re-engineer WBAI history

[...] * Bernard's behind-the-scenes "double-dipping" (illegal under station rules and a violation of the union contract) whereby he was collecting two salaries from the station -- one as PD and the other as host of Wakeup Call -- giving him a paycheck (my estimate) of about $80,000 a year -- and transferring from the station's treasury to his pockets as much as a quarter million dollars during the time he was collecting two salaries (which of course can't be verified because WBAI won't release its bank-payroll records). When pressure from staff and board finally forced Bernard to relinquish his Wakeup Call paycheck (at a time when many of his WBAI colleagues would eventually face layoffs and have to contemplate the prospect of dining on canned cat food), his friend Valerie helpfully, and unilaterally, raised the salary of the PD's job to compensate Bernard for his lost Wakeup Call salary.[...]

Unsubstantiated allegations of failures of Bernard White

Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:52:09 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] WBAI and the Domino Pizza Syndrome

[...] During three years of failing pledge drives, our program director, Bernard White, has been increasingly unable to get listeners to support the station. They don't like his programs, don't like his policies, don't like his harassment and firing of popular programmers such as Mike Feder, Gary Null, and Robert Knight.

And the listeners have told him so -- by refusing to pledge. And by deluging him with thousands of angry phone calls, letters, and emails.

But hey! Like the Domino manager of Chelm, what does Bernard care. WBAI has become our local Edsel dealership, and Bernard's uncles (Don Rojas, Dan Coughlin, Lonnie Hicks, Erroll Maitland, Bob Lederer, Cerene Roberts, Vajra Kilgour, Dred Scott Keyes, and the rest of the Justice & Unity clique) intend to keep him at the wheel forever.[...]

Unsubstantiated allegations of "race-baiting" and violence

Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 17:22:43 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Why WBAI has no money

[...] The program director has also lowered staff morale and created an atmosphere of race-baiting and physical violence at the station in which staff members or listeners are often threatened or actually beaten up in their own offices by outside thugs.[...]

Unsubstantiated allegations regarding Bernard White, Dan Coughlin, and Don Rojas

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:11:26 -0400
From: Steve Brown
Subject: [News@SteveBrownOnBoard] Deja vu at WBAI

[...] It seems clearly evident – from their otherwise inexplicable behavior -- that several years ago Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin joined with WBAI Program Director Bernard White and General Manager Don Rojas in a secret pact to support each other in Pacifica politics, no matter what, even if it meant harming the health of Pacifica and WBAI. We can't know exactly why they formed this pact, or how they paid each other off for their mutually accommodating support.[...]

Unsubstantiated allegations of "anti-White and anti-Semitic sentiment at the station"

From: "Stephen M Brown"
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 04:50:35 -0500
Subject: [WBAIelections] Reply to Don Rojas and Terry Goodman - re: Who Cares If WBAI's Arbitron Figures Plummet?

[...] For I had made no secret of my discontent with the station's program director, Bernard White. I had publicly criticized (and documented with transcripts, eye-witness testimony, and material from the public record) his personal race-baiting and his sly-wink encouragement of a culture of anti-White and anti-Semitic sentiment at the station, often leading to violence.[...]

Appendix III

Race-based analysis of KGNU "success" and WBAI "failure"

From: "Stephen M Brown"
Date: Wed Aug 31, 2005 7:05 pm
Subject: Fw: Why KGNU succeeded where WBAI could not

Dear WBAI Supporter --

You may find of interest this letter I just sent to Marty Durlin, who is general manager of KGNU (Boulder, Colorado) as well as a director (and former chair) of the Pacifica National Board.

Steve Brown
----------------------------------
----------------------------------

Dear Marty

What a story!

The overflowing of good will and shared community effort demonstrated by your radio staff and its supporters during the renovation of KGNU's building sounds -- to the ears of this New Yorker (who is also a member of WBAI's governing board) -- like a fairy tale about a golden age in a mythical land that never was.

Not that I doubt your story, Marty. (Everyone knows that Pacifica National Board members never lie.)

It just seems, suspiciously, as if you were claiming that KGNU's radio staff, and its listeners, and its supporters all -- well, all actually liked and trusted one another.

Hard as that is for a WBAI board member like myself to understand, and unfamiliar as I am with the concept, I will nevertheless accept it, hypothetically, for the sake of being able to pose a question that occurred to me, tangentially, as I read your post.

That question is:

How much of WBAI's almost willful self-destructiveness over the last 15 or 20 years (up to and including the last 3 years during which internal strife, mistrust, nastiness, violence, and extreme interpersonal antagonism have brought the station to the brink of bankruptcy and near total meltdown) is solely and entirely due to the tensions, frictions, and politics -- of race?

Which leads to the corollary question: How much of the success of KGNU (not counting, of course, the part that your leadership and the efforts of your staff and listeners have played) has been due to an almost total absence of the tensions, frictions, and politics -- of race?

Countries like Japan and Scandinavia, that are racially homogenous, have never (though they have other problems) been crippled by racially generated strife -- as have the U.S., Britain, and France, and lately Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Switzerland, which used to be racially homogeneous, but now contain large "undigested" populations of foreign Third World laborers, primarily people of color, who have been imported to do the unpleasant work that their own citizens no longer wish to do.

New York mirrors the racial diversity of U.S. society as a whole, and WBAI, if anything, magnifies that diversity. Consequently, it is no surprise that WBAI -- which has always been a pressure cooker of racial mistrust, nastiness, violence, and extreme interpersonal antagonism -- has finally, and perhaps irretrievably, blown its top.

On the other hand, KGNU -- insofar as it mirrors Boulder -- has to be one of the least racially diverse places in America.

As a result, KGNU does not seem to have been plagued by the racial antagonisms that have for so long prevented WBAI from getting out of its own way -- effectively nullifying our advantage of being in one of the most progressive demographic areas of the United States, with a uniquely powerful 50,000 Watt transmitter capable of reaching more than 15 million listeners.

Am I wrong in believing that Boulder, and KGNU, are among the least racially diverse places in America? The picture (the myth?) that always pops into my mind, when someone mentions Boulder, is that of a peaceful place filled with cheerful sun-tanned White guys in penny loafers who ski a lot and drive SUVs.

Indeed, according to the year-2000 census, Boulder's population is 88.33% White. And a third of the city's total population comes from the University of Colorado at Boulder(!) The city's total percentage of African Americans is just 1.22%; of Native Americans, only 0.48%; and of "other races," a little over 3%.

So I ask you, could racial tension -- or rather the absence of it -- be one of the most important reasons for KGNU's success and WBAI's failure?[...]

Appendix IV

Unsubstantiated, inflammatory allegations regarding those opposed to the positions of Steve Brown, including staging alleged "Nuremberg-style neighborhood rallies"

From: "Stephen M Brown"
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:07:01 -0500
Subject: [WBAIelections] Re: Arbitron reports a huge drop-off in WBAI listenership

[...] the Justice and Unity campaign employed well-known programmers and on-air voices who were allied with (or had been coerced by) management, and whom the listeners had trusted for years (such as the Justice and Unity faction's "godfather," program director Bernard White) to devote time on their programs, and at Nuremberg-style neighborhood rallies, to wringing their hands over the imminent threat from "racist" board members who were about to launch a stationwide purge of people of color (when in fact many the opposing candidates, including the then-chair, were themselves people of color).[...]

"Defenders of the People of Color"

From: "Stephen M Brown"
To: "Undisclosed Recipients"
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 20:56:14 -0500
Subject: Response to IndyMedia's "Poison of Racial Autonomy at WBAI"

[...] As a member of the LSB, I fear for the future of WBAI, which is now the captured plaything of venal power grabbers who smear their opponents with charges of "racism" and have piously assumed the mantle of Defenders of People of Color to mask their own self-serving interests.

Steve Brown

"Race Riots" at "several meetings of the local station board"

From: "Stephen M Brown"
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:31:19 -0500
Subject: [WBAIelections] Arbitron reports a huge drop-off in WBAI listenership

[...] At several meetings of the local station board, virtual "race riots" were fomented by members of the station managers own staff, whom he refused to discipline even though he was in attendance as they ran up and down the aisles, shouting racial epithets at board members and forcing the termination of the public meeting (at which one board member had been physically attacked by a political supporter of management).[...]

Appendix V

False allegations regarding a supposed "break-in" by Ayo Harrington and Tony Ryan to the office Harrington shared with Robert Knight, going far beyond any charges even made by Mr. Knight himself and made without any personal knowledge by Steve Brown, and reaching conclusions before any investigation was completed

From: "Stephen M Brown"
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 05:31:19 -0500
Subject: [WBAIelections] Arbitron reports a huge drop-off in WBAI listenership

[...] recently, Knight's office at the station was broken into by two employees of the station manager (Ayo Harrington and Tony Ryan), who Knight returned to find rifling his personal papers and trying to log onto his computer, where his confidential investigative source files are kept. Although neither the station manager nor the program director accepts responsibility for the break-in and for the threats of violence against Knight, nevertheless they have declined, as of this writing, to take appropriate disciplinary action against either Harrington or Ryan.[...]